: Re: My Hero is captured, now what? I'm trying to write an escape scene in a fantasy novel. My problem is that I've spent a fair amount of effort explaining what a dire predicament my hero is

@Fox6458700

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He'll have been carefully searched, sure, but that might not be enough to find everything. And a good idea when hiding something, is never do - always hide two things, because when one gets found, they usually stop looking.

A character of mine (with a reputation for low cunning, but not exactly intelligence) was captured. Before leaving, his captor gloated that she'd found his set of lockpicks strapped to the inside of his kilt. (The 'obvious foreigner=stupid' assumption was something he'd made use of before.)

After waiting a while to make sure his captor had left, the character stuck his fingers down his throat, and threw up. This produced (apart from the obvious) a small, sealed plastic capsule (of a size difficult to swallow, but not impossible), and inside was a length of serrated wire wrapped around two finger grips. (A flexible saw.)

A funny moment came shortly after, when the captor tried to use the lockpicks for an unrelated task, and they snapped. This led to her finding out they were fake lockpicks (he'd originally bought them from a joke novelty shop), so he couldn't have used them anyway, even if he'd known how (he didn't have a clue about how to pick locks) and been capable (he was hamfisted and fairly clumsy) anyway.

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